“MRS. PRESIDENT, MEMBERS OF THE ALUMNAE: 

“It is just sixty years since the class of ’32, to which I belonged, celebrated a commencement in this same room.  This was the great event of the season to many families throughout this State.  Parents came from all quarters; the elite of Troy and Albany assembled here.  Principals from other schools, distinguished legislators, and clergymen all came to hear girls scan Latin verse, solve problems in Euclid, and read their own compositions in a promiscuous assemblage.  A long line of teachers anxiously waited the calling of their classes, and over all, our queenly Madame Willard presided with royal grace and dignity.  Two hundred girls in gala attire, white dresses, bright sashes, and coral ornaments, with their curly hair, rosy cheeks, and sparkling eyes, flitted to and fro, some rejoicing that they had passed through their ordeal, some still on the tiptoe of expectation, some laughing, some in tears—­altogether a most beautiful and interesting picture.

“Conservatives then, as now, thought the result of the higher education of girls would be to destroy their delicacy and refinement.  But as the graduates of the Troy Seminary were never distinguished in after life for the lack of these feminine virtues, the most timid, even, gradually accepted the situation and trusted their daughters with Mrs. Willard.  But that noble woman endured for a long period the same ridicule and persecution that women now do who take an onward step in the march of progress.

“I see around me none of the familiar faces that greeted my coming or said farewell in parting.  I do not know that one of my classmates still lives.  Friendship with those I knew and loved best lasted but a few years, then our ways in life parted.  I should not know where to find one now, and if I did, probably our ideas would differ on every subject, as I have wandered in latitudes beyond the prescribed sphere of women.  I suppose it is much the same with many of you—­the familiar faces are all gone, gone to the land of shadows, and I hope of sunshine too, where we in turn will soon follow.  “And yet, though we who are left are strangers to one another, we have the same memories of the past, of the same type of mischievous girls and staid teachers, though with different names.  The same long, bare halls and stairs, the recitation rooms with the same old blackboards and lumps of chalk taken for generation after generation, I suppose, from the same pit; the dining room, with its pillars inconveniently near some of the tables, with its thick, white crockery and black-handled knives, and viands that never suited us, because, forsooth, we had boxes of delicacies from home, or we had been out to the baker’s or confectioner’s and bought pies and cocoanut cakes, candy and chewing gum, all forbidden, but that added to the relish.  There, too, were the music rooms, with their old, second-hand pianos, some with